I doubt anyone still watches KTV, but if for some very odd reason you feel like watching it, the Ministry of Information has live streams available on their website. All in all there are 8 KTV channels available to stream and you can check them all out [Here]

Broad City is one of the funniest shows on TV right now and I completely forgot how funny it was until I started watching it again this past weekend with a friend who had never watched the show before. It easily fits in my top 10 funniest shows ever with the likes of Arrested Development, The Office and Parks and Recreation. Actually, Amy Poehler from Parks and Rec is one of the producers on the show.

Broad City follows two women throughout their daily lives in New York City, making the smallest and mundane events hysterical and disturbing to watch all at the same time. [IMDB]

Three seasons of the show are already out, they’re short quick 20 minute episodes so very easy to watch. Season 4 will be airing this coming August which is why I started binge watching the show all over again. I stream Broad City from Hulu but it’s also available on iTunes (Amazon Video has only season 3). So if you haven’t watched it, watch it.

I recently found a copy of Kuwait TV guide from August 1989 and figured I’d scan the KTV2 section and share it on the blog. For those of you who grew up in Kuwait during the 80s you’ll probably remember we had only two channels, KTV1 in Arabic and KTV2 in English. On good days we could also pick up the English Saudi channel and on rare occasions the Bahraini one. KTV2 used to only start at 6PM and then close down by midnight. Much simpler times.

1989 was a good year for TV, going through the guide I came across a lot of my old time favorites including:

Can we discuss the last episode? GIRLS, one of my favorite shows on TV right now is in its last season and they’re going out with a bang. The scene above was the saddest scene I’ve watched on TV since the finale of Six Feet Under (which is considered one of the best TV series endings btw). The acting was incredible, the subtle facial expressions and moments were so real, it reminded me why I loved the show so much, not that I needed reminding. GIRLS is real and raw in the same way The Wire was.

While some of my favorite shows like The Walking Dead, Homeland and The Americans have gotten pretty lame, GIRLS has not only managed to stay good 6 seasons in, they’ve actually gotten better. The current season is winding down all the story lines and there are only 2 more episodes remaining before the show comes to an end, and so far it’s looking like their best season yet. I don’t want it to end.

If you haven’t watched GIRLS then I highly recommend you do, it’s available to watch right now on HBO and OSN.

The OA is a new Netflix show that was released this past Friday. It’s science fiction, it has supernatural and fantasy elements, and its super weird, I loved it. I don’t want to say much more about the show other than the fact if you have Netflix then watch it. It’s only 8 episodes (similar to Stranger Things) so shouldn’t take more than 2 or 3 days to get through them all.

I’ve shared the trailer above but I think it’s more fun watching the show without watching the trailer. The show also has a pretty weird twitter account which you can go through @the_OA but I also recommend going through it after you’re done watching the show or at least once you’re a couple of episodes in. They don’t have any spoilers but they could ruin things a bit.

Last week Amazon announced that Amazon Prime Video was officially available in more than 200 countries… including Kuwait. I had previously assumed that there was no country restrictions since I was using Amazon Prime Video anyway, but I guess there was. Amazon Prime Video if you haven’t heard of it before is similar to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. They have a ton of popular shows and movies available on the network (like all 8 seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm), but they also have a bunch of great exclusive content like The Grand Tour and my favorite, The Man in the High Castle. If you already have an Amazon Prime account then you already have access to Amazon Prime Video (and Music), but if you don’t then the monthly subscription to Amazon Prime Video is just $2.99.

I use Amazon’s FireStick to stream Prime Video onto my TV but there are multiple ways of watching including using your browser. For more details, check out this [Link]

Update: If you use the Kuwait version of Amazon Prime Video a lot of the content will be restricted similar to how Netflix restricts content based on geographic locations. To get around this you need a DNS proxy and I personally use smartdnsproxy.com

I stopped using Netflix awhile back since the US version stopped working with my DNS Proxy provider and the Kuwait version lacked all the real estate reality shows I enjoy watching (like Beachfront Bargain Hunt). But recently, my DNS provider Smart DNS Proxy fixed the issue and Netflix US has started working again in Kuwait. According to their support page dating September 30th:

We have restored Netflix for many of our users and are working on getting everyone back ASAP. If you see a “United States 01-10” region here, give it a try! Browsers should work without any other changes, devices may need static routes setup.

So there you have it, if you want to use the US version of Netflix in Kuwait you can now do so again. It’s $4.99 a month for the proxy account and you can get it [Link]

Update: There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding Netflix US vs Netflix Kuwait. If you aren’t using a proxy, then you’re accessing Netflix Kuwait. It doesn’t matter if you have a Netflix US account with a US credit card, if you’re in Kuwait you’ll automatically access Netflix Kuwait. Netflix Kuwait and Netflix US look exactly the same, but the Netflix Kuwait library is a lot smaller. Here is a simple test to tell which Netflix you have. Search for the show “Lakefront Bargain Hunt”. If you have Netflix US it will show up, if you have Netflix Kuwait it will tell you not found.

I’ve been waiting to watch the new HBO show Westworld ever since it was announced, and after a long wait, the first episode premiered a couple of days back. I watched it last night and I think its now one of my favorite currently running series alongside Game of Thrones and Veep. I just hope it stays this good and knowing HBO, I trust it will.

Westworld is a SciFi series starring Anthony Hopkins and Ed Harris and with J. J. Abrams as one of the producers. Since its and HBO it means there’s lots of nudity, violence, gore and a huge budget. After watching the first episode I can’t believe this is actually a series and not a big budget blockbuster movie, it’s so well made, even the soundtrack is amazing. So if you have HBO Go you can stream it online or you’re going to have to download it illegally since I’m not sure there is another way you can watch it. Check out the trailer above.

If you’re looking for a new show to start watching and you’re a fan of Kiefer Sutherland, then I highly recommend you start watching Designated Survivor. The pilot episode came out a few days and I was hooked 5 minutes into it. Designated survivor is a term I hadn’t heard of before and this is the description Wikipedia has on it:

In the United States, a designated survivor (or designated successor) is an individual in the presidential line of succession, usually a member of the United States Cabinet, who is arranged to be at a physically distant, secure, and undisclosed location when the President and the country’s other top leaders (e.g., Vice President and Cabinet members) are gathered at a single location, such as during State of the Union addresses and presidential inaugurations. This is intended to guarantee continuity of government in the event of a catastrophic occurrence that kills the President and many officials in the presidential line of succession. If such an event would occur, killing both the President and Vice President, the surviving official highest in the line, possibly the designated survivor, would become the Acting President of the United States under the Presidential Succession Act.

In the show, Kiefer Sutherland plays the role of a low-level Cabinet member who becomes President of the United States after a huge explosion kills everyone above him. It’s a pretty intense show (similar to ‘24‘ in a way) and so I’m going to have a difficult time watching this one episode at a time every week. If you have Hulu you’ll find Designated Survivor there and if you have Netflix outside the US you should also find it there. You won’t find it on the US Netflix, this is probably the only time you want to have an international Netflix account.

“Masane’a Al-Najaah” which translates to Success Factories in English is a locally produced 33 episode reality TV series that follows 27 young successful Kuwaiti entrepreneurs and their projects. The show is in Arabic without any English subtitles so non-Arabic speakers aren’t going to understand anything. But, on the plus side the series is available online to watch for free. Below are the first 3 episodes, for some reason after the 3rd episode they started splitting the videos up into four 15 minute parts which not only makes it difficult to watch but also to difficult to find and link to.